Smarter Search

Newsweek, November, 2005 by Fred Guterl and Sandra Upson

It's one thing to go on the Internet and get driving directions to the birthday party at the Funplex your kid was invited to, but what if you're driving along and find that the road is closed and the venue has moved? And while it's great to get information on your mother's medical condition by typing a few words into Google, why can't your browser also come up with a list of doctors who treat it--and who happen to have available appointment times when your calendar is free?

Search engines like those from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are marvels of engineering. They are indispensable to everyone from elementary schoolkids to professionals, but they don't do as well as they could in turning information on

the Web into knowledge. Unless you enter just the right...